Motifs (Romeo and Juliet)

Light and dark, light representing the lovers as they see one another in the darkness of their troubles; darkness also as the shroud of secrecy; also light as lightning and therefore transitory and easily burnt out.

For example:

• 'But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks? / It is the east, and Juliet is the sun'
  
  Act 2 Scene 2
• 'The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars, / As daylight doth a lamp'
  
  Act 2 Scene 2
• 'It is too rash, too unadivsed, too sudden; / Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be / Ere one can say 'It lightens''
  
  Act 2 Scene 3
• 'Take him and cut him out in little stars, / And he will make the face of heaven so fine/That all the world will be in love with night/And pay no worship to the garish sun'
  
  Act 3 Scene 2
• 'More light and light; more dark and dark our woes!'
  
  Act 3 Scene 5
• 'For here lies Juliet, and her beauty makes / This vault a feasting presence full of light'
  
  Act 5 Scene 3
• 'A glooming peace this morning with it brings. / The sun for sorrow will not show his head'
  
  Act 5 Scene 3

Celestial imagery, representing the power of fate; also heaven and heavenly as descriptive of the lovers' view of one another.

For example:

• 'A pair of star-crossed lovers take their life'
  
  The Prologue
• 'my mind misgives / Some consequence yet hanging in the stars'
  
  Act 1 Scene 4
• 'so smile the heavens upon this holy act, / That after hours with sorrow chide us not!'
  
  Act 2 Scene 6
• 'Can heaven be so envious'
  
  Act 3 Scene 2
• 'The heavens do lour upon you for some ill'
  
  Act 4 Scene 5
• 'Is it even so? then I defy you, stars!'
  
  Act 5 Scene 1
• 'See, what a scourge is laid upon your hate,/That heaven finds means to kill your joys with love'
  
  Act 5 Scene 3

Nature, representing beauty, value, youth and potential.

For example:

• 'fresh female buds shall you see this night'
  
  Act 1 Scene 2
• 'Verona's summer hath not such a flower'
  
  Act 1 Scene 3
• 'So shows a snowy dove trooping with crows'
  
  Act 1 Scene 5
• 'This bud of love, by summer's ripening breath, / May prove a beauteous flower when next we meet'
  
  Act 2 Scene 2
• 'O mickle is the powerful grace that lies / In plants, herbs, stones, and their true qualities. / For naught so vile that on the earth doth live / But to the earth some special good doth give'
  
  Act 2 Scene 2
• 'An eagle, madam, / Hath not so green, so quick, so far an eye / As Paris hath
  
  Act 3 Scene 6
• 'sweet flower, with flowers thy bridal bed I strew'
  
  Act 5 Scene 3